The shallow, misleading Republican response to the State of the Union message only works for people who don’t understand economics at all, or want to twist reality.

Congressman Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin,
is far from reality. He would slash programs — Medicare, for example; and set Social
Security to the winds of free enterprise. The GOP program is this: keep cutting taxes and programs–nothing more. It’s all a sham — helping big business create new markets that shouldn’t exist. It is a basic appeal to the ignorant. The harangue of creeping American socialism under a socialist president is nonsense.

Paul Krugman says it well–economic collapse in Europe was inspired by mortgage-hungry bankers, taking a cue from their American brethren. It was not a result of liberal spending and social programs. Krugman’s call to reality is worth reading: “American conservatives have long had their own private Europe of the imagination — a place of economic stagnation and terrible health care, a collapsing society groaning under the weight of Big Government. The fact that Europe isn’t actually like that — did you know that adults in their prime working years are more likely to be employed in Europe than they are in the United States? — hasn’t deterred them. So we shouldn’t be surprised by similar tall tales about European debt problems.”